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Judgments as Public Information

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 September 2015

Paul Magrath
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Abstract

This article is written by Paul Magrath who is the Head of Product Development and Online Content at the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales (ICLR). His article explores the issues surrounding the custodianship of those public legal documents, such as court judgments, which form primary sources of law but which may also contain private data, and looks at the way custodians of such data can also act as gatekeepers, enhancing or inhibiting access by the public as well as more specialised users. It expands upon an article published by Infolaw.co.uk entitled “Custodians and gatekeepers: maintaining access to public legal information”, and refers to recent case law involving the tension between information in the public domain and the individual's privacy and “right to be forgotten” by search engines. The article also looks at how court documents are made accessible in other jurisdictions and imagines how things might be improved in our own courts, before concluding that the model of a not-for-profit organisation, such as the ICLR or BAILII (the British and Irish Legal Information Institute), may work as well if not better than public or private management of judgments and other legal public information.

Keywords

judgmentslegislationlaw reportingpublic informationGoogleBAILIIICLR
Type
Current Issues
Information
Legal Information Management , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , September 2015 , pp. 189 - 195
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2015. Published by British and Irish Association of Law Librarians 

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References

Footnotes

1 For a general discussion of the “Open Law” principle, see Sarah Glassmeyer and Peter Smith, “Open law: technology in service of the rule of law”, Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive http://shura.shu.ac.uk/8241/ Accessed 27 May 2015.

2 See Simon McGarr, EU Analysis blog: “Do Facebook and the USA violate EU data protection law? The CJEU hearing in Schrems” http://eulawanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/does-facebook-and-usa-violate-eu-data.html Accessed 27 May 2015.

3 Commission Decision of 26 July 2000 pursuant to Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on the adequacy of the protection provided by the safe harbour privacy principles and related frequently asked questions issued by the US Department of Commerce (2000/520/EC) http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32000D0520:EN:HTML Accessed 27 May 2015.

4 www.bailii.org Accessed 27 May 2015.

5 www.legislation.gov.uk Accessed 27 May 2015.

6 https:// www.judiciary.gov.uk/judgments/ Accessed 27 May 2015.

7 See Rebecca Herle, “A ‘Charity’ Case in Point” (2014) Legal Information Management, vol 14, No 3, p 158.

8 See, for example, Nick Holmes, Internet Newsletter for Lawyers, “Justice online” http://www.infolaw.co.uk/newsletter/2014/09/justice-online/ Accessed 27 May 2015.

9 Joshua Rozenberg, The Guardian, 16 December 2013, “UK supreme court wins independence from government … in its url”  http://www.theguardian.com/law/guardian-law-blog/2013/dec/16/uk-supreme-court-independence-url  Accessed 27 May 2015.

10 Policy for Access to Supreme Court of Canada Court Records, effective 17 March 2015. http://www.scc-csc.gc.ca/case-dossier/rec-doc/pol-eng.aspx Accessed 27 May 2015.

11 News release, “Catch-up on court action: Supreme Court launches ‘video on demand’ service” https://www.supremecourt.uk/news/catch-up-on-court-action-supreme-court-launches-video-on-demand-service.html Accessed 27 May 2015.

12 UK Supreme Court YouTube channel https:// www.youtube.com/user/UKSupremeCourt Accessed 27 May 2015.

13 Law Society Gazette, 15 May 2015, “Supreme Court ‘iPlayer’ time limit condemned” http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/supreme-court-iplayer-time-limit-condemned/5048867.fullarticle   Accessed 27 May 2015.